R-Drive Image 6 Review

Pros / R-Drive Image lets you save settings for tasks and reuse them every time you run that task in the future.

Cons / The interface is not as modern and intuitive as other programs.

Verdict / R-Drive Image is extremely powerful software for imaging, cloning, virtualization and mounting, and is ideal for expert users.

R-Drive Image is excellent and comprehensive disk imaging software for your home or office. Like many disk imaging tools, it has many of the same basic features of hard drive cloning software as well as the fundamentals of backup software, including differential and incremental backups. It gives you plenty of options for customizing most actions to suit your needs, and it works well with partitions. Because it can help you automate many actions its offers access to advanced features, it easily wins our Top Ten Reviews Silver Award.

Imaging & Storage

You can run a variety of tasks with this hard drive cloning software, such as creating images, backups and clones. It also lets you mount an image onto a virtual machine or connect an image as a virtual logical disk. Once it creates an image, it’ll even verify that the image is usable and error-free. It can also create bootable media along with a startup version that can be used in a pseudo-graphic mode or standard graphic user interface as needed. File creation and burning on-the-fly are also supported.

If you’re trying to image from a failed drive, the software lets you skip bad sectors, and it can even be set up to keep running your tasks when it encounters an error. You have control over the image compression ratio, and if you need to split your image, the program can do so automatically or you can give it a fixed size. For extra security, you can encrypt your data and even add a password to protect it from prying eyes.

Restoration & Mounting

If your computer crashes, R-Drive Image makes short work of restoring a functional image and getting your computer back up and running from a pre-OS environment. Even if you only need to restore a single file or folder, you can do so. Images can even be connected as a read-only disk if you only need to browse your mounted data. The software can also resize images during a restoration, which eliminates extra space between files, helping you save space on your hard drive or additional machines.

You can easily work with the software and your bootable media from a pre-OS environment, and it’s just as easy for the software to help you mount an image to dissimilar hardware or even to your virtual machine or drive if you use those.

Functionality

The interface has a somewhat outdated feel that limits approachability for intermediate or novice users. However, despite that, the disk cloning software is massively powerful, intuitive and lightweight. It walks you through advanced actions via built-in wizards to ensure you do things correctly. One of the reasons it’s among the best disk imaging software on our lineup is because it lets you save settings as a default and you can reuse them in future tasks without having to constantly reset them every time, saving you time and stress. In addition to the settings saver, the task scheduler lets you program one-time actions or recurring ones to run automatically when you’re away from the computer.

It also has extensive command line integration, letting you create, edit and run a variety of scripts to help you automate some processes. You can also peruse extensive log reports to review actions that have already been completed along with any accompanying errors or comments. To maximize your computer’s power and reduce errors while running a virtual machine or drive, you can adjust the CPU usage and hard drive storage levels within the preferences panel.

Help & Support

You can contact the software’s technical support team directly via live chat, email or phone, letting you choose the option that works best for you. You also have access to a hefty FAQs database and community user forum.

Whether you prefer to work on Windows, Mac or Linux, the software is compatible with all recent versions of each. It also offers support for Windows Storage Spaces, Linux Logical Volume Manager volumes, and MacRAIDs.

Summary

R-Drive Image is useful for maintaining your computer as it can create copies and backups and restore them in a pinch. Its added ability to work well with virtual machines and drives adds to its comprehensive functionality and is a great option, whether you just want to manage a single computer at home or multiple at your work or organization.